


Consonance

by thedevilchicken



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Getting Together, Post-Canon, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 08:11:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before they had anything else at all, they had drift compatibility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consonance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DigitalMeowMix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DigitalMeowMix/gifts).



Sometimes when they spar, the way they move is more like a dance than like a fight. 

Raleigh knows it's all about compatibility and compatibility is something he and Mako've got in spades. Heck, before they had anything else at all, before they had mutual respect, before the sex though he really can't pretend like that's not great, before they even really liked each other and didn't just like the idea of liking each other, they had compatibility. But back then he was still trying to use the whole resurrected-jaeger last-ditch-attempt-to-save-the-world thing to get past losing Yancy and she was zeroed in on avenging her folks like there was nothing else in the world to her but that, so maybe in the start compatibility was just a fact and didn't mean that much. Not as much as it could've if they hadn't both pretty much been selfish, short-sighted jerks about it. He's not proud of it. There's not much he's proud of.

When they spar, it's all about compatibility. It's not so much strictly biological as it is neurological, he guesses, brainwaves, neurophysical responses to various stimuli, learned behaviors and all that crap that Mako understands but he doesn't really give a damn about if he's honest. It's not that he's too dumb to get it - he's pretty sure he's never the smartest person in the room, especially when Mako's there or Gottlieb or Geiszler, but he's also not a total jackass - but he still doesn't need to understand the the whys or the wherefores, the theories or the tech, when he _feels_ it. It's in his head and in his heart and in every fiber of every single thing he's got in him and he swears it's as much instinct as it is science. Mako doesn't disagree with that, but she always says the words the other way around: it's as much science as it is instinct. But she smiles when she says it and sometimes he thinks she's just teasing him. Other times he _knows_ she is.

It was thrilling the first time they sparred, the candidates all eyes as Mako took off her boots and Pentecost standing there looking at the two of them like he wasn't sure if he should be proud or just kinda pissed at the whole thing, or at Raleigh, or at himself. Raleigh gets it, he does: Mako was his daughter in every way that matters and hell, even Marshal Hansen says he was never 100% okay with his kid piloting a jaeger, so why would Pentecost be any different? Maybe that's why Herc co-piloted with Chuck himself, Raleigh thinks, though it's not like he wants to get into a conversation about Hercules Hansen's son when he's just as dead and gone as Stacker Pentecost. But the fight he had with Mako that first time was a rush the way the others all hadn't been and it wasn't just 'cause she was the only girl they'd put him up against in a sea of guys. The give and take, the back and forth, the way they moved, how they challenged each other... it was compatibility right then and there. It was obvious. They didn't even have to work at it. He _felt_ it.

Then there was their first deployment, fucking up Hong Kong like it was going out of style, losing the Wei Tangs and the Kaidonovskys along the way. And then there was their second deployment, out there at the breach, when they all lost a lot and maybe gained something in other ways, or at least that's the line they try to sell. These days, they do a lot of selling. They sell the safety of the planet for the bargain price of a few new jaegers, a few recommissioned shatterdomes.

They didn't spar for a month after they didn't die, while they were being poked and prodded and tested and jabbed six ways till Sunday 'cause they were the only people who'd ever even been close to the other side of the breach. Then after the tests there were interviews, like either of them knew what to say on TV when they first started at it, makeup and bright lights and a fucking whirlwind of publicity 'cause everyone wanted to gawk at the pilots that'd saved the world. Raleigh wanted to say _look, guys, we were just doing our job - why don't you thank Stacker Pentecost and Chuck Hansen, they're the ones who fucking died for you!_ but he knows his job and Mako knows hers. Making the PPDC look good builds jaegers and keeps shatterdomes open for business, so they put on their best smiles and they go to work. And who knows: the Precursors opened the breach once, who's to say they won't do it again? They need to be prepared. They've got eleven functional jaegers now and they're bringing Vladivostok back online, so maybe they're even getting there.

And then, when the chopper dropped them back at the shatterdome, when they'd gotten back to the salty sea air and the rusting metal bulkheads and the goddamn lumpy mattresses that still always seem like home somehow no matter how many super-soft beds they sleep in around the world, they wandered into the combat room like that even made sense after three weeks of shitty talk shows and exhausting flights and that kind of travel-scum feel of getting home after a trip. They should've headed for the showers and then straight to bed but there they were, unlacing their boots at the side of the mats, pulling off their socks and their jackets - Raleigh tossed his into a heap that he figured he'd sort out later and Mako folded hers neatly and precisely, the way she always does. He doesn't read too much into it but sometimes it seems to mean something.

They should've slept, but they stretched and they picked up their _jo_ sticks and they fought instead. It wasn't thrilling, not like the first time, it was just tired and ragged but somehow still pretty much necessary and they bruised each other so damn badly that some of them were there for a month, blacks fading into purples and greens then yellows that merged with their skin, hidden under their clothes during the day. They whirled and they struck out with their bare feet and bare elbows and they bruised each other, though when Mako went down to her knees on the mat, when she broke down and cried like she'd lost everything she'd ever had and then some, it had nothing to do with how she'd been hit or how many times. Raleigh went down too and he held her; the fact she let him seemed to mean something.

"He taught me to fight," Mako said, her face pressed wet to the crook of his neck, and Raleigh didn't need to ask who she meant. "He oversaw my training. He was always there."

"He did a hell of a job, Mako," Raleigh replied. "But If you keep handing me my ass like this, it'll start to get embarrassing."

He could feel her smile against his skin. Damn near everything that he's done since then is just to keep her smiling. 

They went into the combat room again the next day, and the day after that. They've been going in every day they're there in the Hong Kong shatterdome, finding times when it's quiet, keeping to themselves. They don't mind showing off sometimes, rallying the troops, but that's not the point; after a long day, sometimes what they need is quiet, a half hour away from the thrum of engines and the chatter of voices. Sometimes what they need is the sound of their breath in still air, the sound of one _jo_ against another, not even speaking though they could both do it in more than one language if they wanted to. It's a different skill to piloting a jaeger, though pilots get taught it to help them work together in the cockpit; the theory is they get to know each other's style through fighting so they can apply what they know in the drift and who knows, maybe there's something to it. But six months after they closed the breach, the fight still wasn't about their jaeger, their fancy-ass reconstruction of Gipsy that's never really felt like the old one, as good as it is. It's good, but it's not Gipsy.

Six months after they closed the breach, they came in from another goddamn whirlwind press tour 'cause the world still hadn't gotten sick of them somehow. They'd gone out with a couple of the new jaegers' teams, a pair of brothers from Hong Kong who'd just gotten their shot at a jaeger straight out of the reopened academy, and a veteran married Russian couple who'd been based out of Vladivostok with the Kaidonovskys, once upon a time, back in the day. They got in and they should've hit the showers and then bed but they headed straight for the combat room, set down their bags and took off their boots. They didn't need to discuss it. From the second they stepped off of the chopper, they both knew where they were headed. 

He loves the way Mako's hair sways around her face when they fight. He loves the way her skin flushes with it, the way her muscles tense, the way she moves. She went for him then, really went for him, almost scowling while she did it, and she caught him right across the forearm down by his elbow with one end of her staff and made him curse out loud 'cause he knew it'd bruise like hell. Still, even two points to zip, Raleigh can give as good as he gets. He drove her back, faked left, went right, tripped her with the end of his staff and followed down, straddled her thighs, held the long edge of the stick to her throat as his pulse raced and her breath heaved. She tried to throw him off but he held her down. She tried to throw him off but then again, not really. If she'd meant it, she could've done it, so he abandoned his staff and he pinned her wrists to the mat up above her head. She could've gotten out of that, too. Her father really had taught her well.

"What do you want, Mako?" Raleigh said, and she gave him a look like she had no clue at all. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe she really hadn't given it any thought at all.

She's smarter than him - she's not always the smartest person in the room but even when she's not, she's pretty close. She's smarter than him but there are some things he knows a whole lot better than she does: she pretends she's cold, but she feels everything just as deep as he does, maybe more than he does. She pretends she's cold, but when they fight she lets go. And Raleigh knew what she was going to do before she'd even thought about doing it. Sometimes, he can read her like a book. That's compatibility. 

It wasn't like everything they'd done had been leading up to that moment or anything like that because hell, they'd been partners for six months by then and okay, so he liked her, so he was attracted to her and she was even attracted to him, but that wasn't even close to the most important thing in their lives right at that moment. They had shit going on with the PPDC, fundraising, getting new-old jaegers back into shape, crappy talk shows, _mourning_. And they had each other, they pretty much clung to each other for all Raleigh's gung-ho bravado and Mako's study in quiet, private intensity, but that just meant they were co-pilots, that they'd been through a lot, that they understood. They were in each other's heads, after all, along with all that that meant, and just getting used to that had taken time when Mako had kept herself to herself her whole life and Raleigh hadn't managed to get the day Yancy died out of his head for at least that first moment every time they drifted. There'd been an attraction but it hadn't had to lead to more, not till all that crap had gotten at least halfway worked out first.

It wasn't like everything had led to it but Raleigh thinks maybe it was inevitable anyway. Not because of the drift 'cause if anything that hurt their chances more than it really helped them, mixing them in and shaking them up the way it always does, but because they're who they are under all the layers of who they are, bloody like open fucking wounds. She leaned up and she kissed him, hard and dumb and deep, and he saw it coming a mile away so maybe he should've stopped it, he thinks, except he doesn't really think that. Maybe he should've walked away but he doesn't really think that, either. He kissed her back because it was the right thing to do and he still thinks that it was, got his hands in her hair, blue strands twisted all around his fingers. It was like kissing an espresso machine she'd drunk so much coffee on the flight back in from LA, but he'd brushed his teeth twenty minutes before they'd landed and for her it was probably kinda like making out with a candy cane, so he figured what the hell. She didn't back down. She made him break away first.

She stayed in his room that night, after. There was nothing else to it, just an extra body under the sheets in his too-small bed pressed up against his side, her hair draped all over her face and shifting faintly with her breath. And she was still there when he woke in the morning, brushing her teeth in front of the mirror 'cause they'd brought her duffel in with them when they'd left the combat room, she hadn't even been back to her quarters at all. She'd been living out of a suitcase for the past two weeks, after all, so what difference did another night make? 

He stepped up behind her and she eyed him in the mirror, brush in mouth; he rested his hands at her hips and she raised her brows at him. 

"First brush your teeth," she said, around a mouthful of brush, somehow cute with it though he pretty much didn't dare say so, not right then. So he did as he was told and brushed his teeth, then she pushed him back down on the bed and she crawled up over his lap and kissed him. Three years later, that's still the rule in the morning: their first kiss of the day always tastes like peppermint toothpaste.

They went to the showers after that, separately, washed off the feel of plane travel and then went to work. He usually makes himself useful with the marshal like the guy needs a 2IC or like maybe he has a subtle flair for leadership, and Mako still works as an engineer even though, yeah, they're both pilots and hell, if they felt anything like it they could quit the rest of the work altogether and just hang out in the cafeteria eating black market Tootsie Rolls all day. Still, he loves the way she's usually wrist-deep in jaeger grease from dusk till dawn but she scrubs her hands till they're spotless every evening, before they head for the combat room to do something that's maybe training and that's maybe not. 

That night, after the night before, when they sparred it was more like a dance than a fight. It wasn't like they dialled it down, wasn't like either one of them gave an inch or asked for one, but in all the fraught and breathless motion and the clatter of staffs and the footfalls and the twists and turns there was a rhythm, a kind of nonsense logic. He knew her next move before she made it and she knew his. It was instinct, or maybe science - a sweaty kind of science, sure, but who was he to judge?

And then she kissed him after, or maybe it wasn't so much _after_ as it was _during_ , because maybe what came next was just a part of what had come before or some such metaphysical crapola and he can't help thinking the guys in the K-lab would be proud of him for even thinking it. They went to the showers and they sneaked in together though he guessed it was technically against regulations, pulled off each other's clothes and maybe it wasn't like they hadn't seen each other naked somewhere in the drift but that was different as much as it was just the same. But Mako always lets go when they fight and maybe they were still fighting when they pulled off each other's clothes and she pulled him in under the spray, bare skin on skin all slick with sweat washed away by water, her wet fingers tangled tight in his wet hair. She knew his next move before he made it, and he knew hers. 

When he put his hands on her, she gasped. When he put his mouth on her, she cursed in Japanese almost like she forgot he'd understand her. When he pressed her up tight against the wall, when she wrapped her legs tight around his waist, when he pushed up deep inside her, she had her hands on him, on his scars, her eyes on his as his heart hammered in his chest. Sex is not like a fight and their fights aren't like sex but maybe both are like a dance sometimes or maybe that's what the drift is, his head wrapped up in hers or hers in his, or both. It's science, or maybe it's instinct - a sweaty kind of instinct, but it's not like he's got it in him to object. The way she felt, his palms slipping over her bare skin, he couldn't've objected for anything. 

Three years later, they share a room instead of staying separated by the width of a corridor, with a bed that's actually big enough for the both of them without her lying halfway on top of him. They fight and they fuck and they do their jobs the best way they know how day to day, they suit up and take Gipsy out to stretch her legs, they let the makeup people do their worst and smile for cameras in their neat PPDC fatigues. And Mako loves him, he thinks, not that he has to think when he can see it in her, in the drift and out of it. She doesn't have to say the words, and he knows she finds relief in that somehow. He says them, though; he's the kind of jackass who doesn't care who knows, or how loudly he tells them. Sometimes it makes her blush, but sometimes she likes that. 

Mako sweeps his legs out from under him with the staff in her hands; he falls, like an ass, like a brick, like a jaeger's left arm dropping down into the fucking ocean. He's the king of melodrama sometimes. Sometimes, it helps.

"Concentrate," she says, frowning that little frustrated frown he likes. Sometimes he does it on purpose. Sometimes, she even pretends she doesn't know that.

"What if I concentrate on you instead?" he replies, from his back, and he smiles as she walks away, as he starts to pick himself up, and she glances back at him over her shoulder with that shiver of her hair around her face, blue streaks against her skin. She turns and settles back into her stance, waiting.

"Then I'll beat you even more quickly than usual," she says, with a tilt of her head, but he doesn't mind losing if he loses to her and she knows that's the truth of it. So he stands back up and he cracks his neck like that's normal for a guy his age, he wheels his arms and he twirls his staff like a goddamn majorette. She looks amused.

Maybe he's never gotten over losing Yancy quite the way he did. Maybe she's never gotten over losing her parents in Japan, or her adoptive dad somewhere down at the bottom of the damn Pacific. Maybe they'll always be raw with it, maybe they'll always be reckless and passionate and fucked-up and angry, even if they both show it in some pretty different ways. They're not the same, but they still are in all the ways that count. It's taken everything they've gone through to make them who they need to be to be together. They're the sum of their experience, and _that_ is compatibility.

"Don't take it easy on me, Mako," Raleigh says with a smile, and she smiles in return though she tries to hide it. She's never taken it easy on him and she never will. She makes everything a challenge, a bright and vivid point in their world full of grease and rusted metal.

"Not tonight," she replies, with a twinkle in her eye, and then the fight is on, just the way it always is.

When they spar, it's more like a dance than like a fight. It's as much science as it is instinct, it's as much instinct as science, and both those things spell out compatibility. It's compatibility both in the drift and out of it, not sparks and thrills and spills but consonance. They're not the same but they're not different. They're each what the other needs to heal, or not.

He feels it when he looks at her. And when they fight, when she lets go, she feels it too.


End file.
